


Anchor Up to Me, Love

by stardustedknuckles



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, F/F, Joyful, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, set in vague future, they just have a good day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:35:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28161774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustedknuckles/pseuds/stardustedknuckles
Summary: The Nein have a good day in the sun, featuring Beauyasha. That's it. They just have a good day.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, The Mighty Nein & The Mighty Nein
Comments: 14
Kudos: 169





	Anchor Up to Me, Love

**Author's Note:**

> Was listening to "Geronimo" by Sheppard yesterday, and it shows.

They had thought going slow would be hard, the two of them, largely because Beau had never lived a life that predicated much in the way of the alternative. There had been a lot about the idea of being with Yasha that Beau couldn't imagine, try as she might, and for Yasha's part it's been a work in progress to understand what it is to want and to be allowed to have.

But it's not hard. This thing they have is warm and comfortable and natural - it's laughing in battle, simultaneous strikes, racing ahead of their family up steep hills and doing reckless stunts to impress each other.

In a lot of ways, it's exactly the same was it was before, but now there's another layer to it. Intention, a promise made. There's just no need to rush what they've had the whole time. The rest comes as it will.

The kissing, though. That's very nice.

It's been two weeks since Aeor, three days since they returned to summer and color and light. Immediate obligations have been taken care of, and for a few days, the Nein are free to breathe.

And the air has never tasted so sweet. Beau and Yasha are sprawled half drunk on sunlight to dry on the warm gray rock several yards from the wide stream leading to the falls. The others' voices carry sometimes, over the water, and the sound of their laughter makes the light feel that much brighter, the vibrance that much sharper.

"I never knew how many colors were in rock before," Yasha murmurs.

Beau opens her eyes and smiles to find her propped up on an elbow, tracing a finger over the veins in the stone they're lying on.

Beau knows what she means - it hardly seems right to even call the rock gray, not after Eiselcross. There are faint shimmers in the composition of its surface, traces of white and copper and rust. It's probably the sun, Beau thinks, it just feels so different here. Yasha's usual monochrome is a cacophony of glimmering light and contrast, pink and gold and blue in the skin peeking from her damp clothes and glistening in her hair.

For Yasha it's like leaving the wastes for the first time again, except this time the colors of the world around her are wide open to her sight, the taint of anger and grief that leached them from her banished somewhere never quite out of reach, but far enough away to make a life out from under its shadow.

Beau's world turns to blue-green and violet when Yasha catches her staring, and when she bites her lip and wiggles her eyebrows it's all too much and Beau rolls up giggling for a taste of her sun-splashed lips. Yasha loves the way her earrings shift under Beau's fingers when her hand splays on her jaw like this, and the delight for Beau is in the gleam and the smooth of them and the way Yasha leans in with the smallest of sounds.

If they never go past this, Beau thinks, if this was them and nothing more it would still be better than anything she'd thought possible. She can smell the water on Yasha this close, the way it takes the clean, ozone-and-earth smell of her and deepens it into a kind of haze between them.

Beau seems to Yasha an anchor for light. It's drawn to her, like to like, and she breathes in the honey heat of it lingering on Beau's dry lips and tangling in her dark hair.

They each believe this must be more happiness than one person could hold, so it is that much more right and good that they should each be here with each other - now, of all times, in this place of light and life - to catch the runoff from the other and hold it drawn between them like spider's silk.

Not all things carried and shared are burdens or secrets, they're discovering. Some things, held close, make people lighter.

Yasha chases for a moment when Beau pulls away, and those blue eyes are as soft as the sky. "You're really hot," Beau says, because they grew up on the dialect of survival and the closest either of them has to the language to describe frivolity, to trace the intricacies of new joy and quiet peace, dwells in the rare moments of pleasure they've snagged like buoys on dark water.

But Yasha's been hearing what Beau doesn't have words to explain for a long time now, and the soft smile curling across her pink cheeks is a new word of its own. Translated, it comes out in the shy "Thank you" and the way her forehead taps against Beau's before she kisses her again.

There's a beauty in the meeting of bodies forged by fighting, a miracle in soft touches that come from the same hands that have brought death and destruction on so many. Together like this, they can be something new - instruments, or sculptures, a constellation of kisses or a mosaic of the moments that made them who they are and delivered them here, now.

And they will. The two of them will transform and reshape their destinies a thousand times, challenge the foundations of fate.

But for now there is the sound of the water, the green shade of sighing trees, and a family that bursts shouting from the brush to startle Beau into laughter and Yasha into a blush and narrowed eyes before she tackles Veth and they tumble end over end into the brush with shrill cries of "Murder! Murder!"

"One more dunk, you guys!" Jester cries. "Let's jump off the waterfall!" Willing hands find Beau's and pull her up, and she finds herself side by side with Fjord as the first two to leap.

"I held them back as long as I could," he calls apologetically over the roar of the falls. He's smiling though, and it's still there when Beau shoulder checks him and they leap with twin whoops towards the deep, clear pool below. Even cold feels different here to Beau, an external pressure that enhances and layers the warmth all around before boosting them back up to a crystalline spray and the distant calls of their friends.

Jester grabs Caduceus's hand and they seem to hang for a moment before speeding towards their friends below. Yasha watches them and waves when they come back up and turns to Caleb. "Want me to throw you?" He gives the kind of grin that looks simultaneously like he's close to his limit for the day and like he doesn't care.

"Don't kill him!" Veth yells from off the side as she levitates down and away.

They peer over the edge. "Ready?" Yasha yells, and when Caleb nods she hurls him with a fierce cry. He goes a solid ten feet out, all limbs and red hair, terrified and elated the whole way. Yasha leaps after him with a higher pitched yelp of adrenaline, the gem dust of her tattoo a brilliant wink in the portrait of black and white she makes as she falls.

The world is its own painting of green forest and white water, and they streak past the primly levitating Veth to smash through the surface with the biggest splash they can manage - a surprising result from Caleb and an unsurprising but nonetheless massive plume of white from Yasha.

She stays for a moment under the water, watching the bubbles rise and the gold-green ripples of light on her skin like their own kind of radiance. Water has a way of feeling slow, and in the dim and soupy depths, surrounded by the dull roar of the falls above and behind her, Yasha feels calm and safe like a dream.

Jester and Beau are waiting when she surfaces and cling to her with delighted demands to be carried out, so she takes them one under each arm and hauls them cheering from the basin and smiles as she shakes them off onto the ground, still laughing as they go.

Fjord pushes his hair out of his eyes and turns to them all. "Think it's time to start heading back if we want to make it in time for the party," he calls. It's harder to hear him at the base of the falls, but they get the gist, and when their things are gathered from the shady rocks nearby, Caleb holds up a tiny turtle figurine.

Beau and Yasha exchange a glance, a silent conversation had with Beau's eyebrows and Yasha's amused smile. Yasha picks her up and shouts towards the others. "We'll meet you down there!"

Her wings unfurl a second later, and Beau returns Jester's excited wave with a huge grin as she's lifted. It's the first time they've done this since Rumblecusp, and Beau can't take her eyes from Yasha's face. They'll cut arrival close, but they pause for a midair kiss all the same before diving back down towards the evening.


End file.
